Wolves were once federally protected but now can be hunted again, making the fate and future of the wolf more controversial than ever. UK journalist Jim Wickens reports from Wyoming and Montana to provide his unique insight into the wolf wars of the West. His blog accompanies the exclusive Earth Focus report, Shades of Gray: Living with Wolves, now online!

We drew up alongside a grey, drab building, unremarkable but for a little side entrance that opened up into a cornucopia of semi-plastered elk heads, racks of moose antlers, mountain lion casts, and a grizzly bear snarling from a perch near the ceiling. We were in the workshop of a taxidermist -- part and parcel of the big game hunting that Montana is famed for. And Mike, the owner of the business, had nervously agreed to talk to us. First we had to agree to be recorded ourselves, then copies of our passports were taken. Visibly shaken by the presence of a journalist, Mike told us that his attorney had said he shouldn't talk to us at all. Mike feels under threat, and particularly so from the media. Wisely fearful of misrepresentation perhaps, he wouldn't be the first to be misquoted for the sake of a tidy headline in this wolf debate over the years.

Scared to talk, and deeply defensive, armed with his own dictaphone whirring away in his breast pocket to record us as we recorded him, Mike eventually plucked up the courage to be interviewed. Standing awkwardly next to a trophy moose head, he described the intricate way in which taxidermist incomes depend upon there being enough trophy game animals to hunt. He had moved from the east coast to start a business here, winning national prizes along the way. But today his business stands depleted, dropping by 30% in recent years, and he said, it is mostly down to that four-legged animal again: the wolf. Hunters across Montana are up in arms about the damage that wolves are doing to elk populations. The big sky country of Montana was once famed for an elk migration numbering countless thousands. But today Mike told us, the numbers are seriously down, making the hunting of trophies -- and in turn the demand to mount them -- a much rarer thing that it used to be.

He's not against wolves he said, but he despairs at the current situation and says that they just need to be managed like every other animal in the state, echoing a common complaint from elk-hunting enthusiasts we met in cafes and diners on our way across the state. In a clever little bit of entrepreneurial marketing, Mike is currently offering a prize for the biggest wolf trophy photo he receives this winter, and he already has four wolves at the tannery, beginning their pain-staking journey of rebirth from bloodied pelt to mounted specimen. Unlike attitudes towards other game species such as elk or bear however, he said the opinion of his clients towards hunting wolves is very different indeed. Wolves are not being hunted in the state so much out of admiration or a competitive desire to add a prize wolf mount to one's big game collection, but rather out of a fundamental wish to simply reduce the number of them.

While we talked, a friendly young man walked through the door brandishing a plastic bag tied into knots, a bloody bobcat carcass lay within, freshly trapped on a ranch and ready for a taxidermic transformation. It's not to everyone's taste, taxidermy remains a niche and squeamish business to the outsider, but it's an industry that is remarkably important in a heartland state like Montana. I got the sense that taxidermy is a bit of a weather-gauge through which the economical vibrancy of the hunting industry can be assessed. And based on the sad, defensive, and defiant interview we carried out today, wolves, it seems, have a lot to answer for.

Read the next installment of Jim's wolf blog, "Coal Smoke and Cattle Sales."

Read the previous installment of Jim's wolf blog, "A Walk on the Wild Side."

Jim Wickens is one of Britain's leading investigative journalists and the co-founder of both the Ecologist Film Unit and also Ecostorm, the environmental media agency. Jim has spend the last decade documenting unreported issues around the world, including exposing illicit whale-meat smuggling networks in Japan, filming the brutal Namibian seal hunt, documenting soya-related murders and poisoning in Argentina, breaking the story of fracking problems in the US, and filming illegal trawlers far out to sea on the Burmese border.

Wolves were once federally protected but now can be hunted again, making the fate and future of the wolf more controversial than ever. UK journalist Jim Wickens reports from Wyoming and Montana to provide his unique insight into the wolf wars of the West. His blog accompanies the exclusive Earth Focus report, Shades of Gray: Living with Wolves, now online!

Tears began well up in the corner of his eyes, but I wasn't sure if it was because of the icy wind blowing in from the mountaintops around us, or the questions that I was putting to him. We were speaking with Nathan Varley and his wife Linda, a couple whose economic survival is intricately intertwined with that of the wolves. But unlike the ranchers or the elk hunters, they need the wolves alive.

Growing up within the Park community Nathan knows Yellowstone better than most, working first as a wolf biologist and then seven years ago setting up a wolf watching eco-tourism company, one of several to have sprouted up in the wake of growing national and international interest after wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone. Today Nathan and Linda take small groups of tourists on foot into the Park, relying on expert knowledge and careful reading of conditions to guide paying members of the public to witness the spectacle of wolves in the wild.

For Nathan, the shooting of wolf number 832F, a famous Lamar Valley alpha female pack leader, potentially hurts him in his pocket book. He told us how he has been fielding dozens of calls from shocked and devastated clients, some of whom he said, return every year simply to see 832F or other favorite wolf individuals: iconic animals that now face the firing line should they stray outside of the park.

Native to the region, Nathan stands in a difficult position and he is careful to avoid criticizing his fellow Montanans, preferring to quote University of Montana research, which suggests that as much as $34 million may be generated every year in and around Yellowstone because of wolves alone. According to Nathan this kind of research demonstrates what he already knows: that wolf tourists come all year round to the Park and that they stay longer; which means they buy more food, and rent more rooms. Compelling financial facts that highlight another competing angle in this complex discussion around the fate of the Rocky Mountain wolves.

Nathan knows that among hard-talking outdoor pragmatists in Montana, it is the language of economics, not emotion, that stands the best chance of winning better support for wolf acceptance in the areas around Yellowstone. With this in mind, it seems that he is careful to avoid showing too many feelings on camera, but nonetheless his soft-spoken words and pregnant pauses seemed to say it all. The pain felt by them over the loss of the 'Yellowstone' wolves to a hunter's bullet is all too evident. But Nathan and Linda carry on, their fates intertwined with the future of the wolves under threat.

Driving away from Yellowstone, I get the chance to digest some of the facts and the voices that we have heard around this debate so far. Whether you love wolves or not, I can't help but get the sense that the ambitious scale of the quotas to trap and shoot wolves in the Rockies can be partly understood as a kind of blood-letting backlash, 16 years of pent-up resentment at the reintroduction of wolves, released at last. Just 20% of Yellowstone's 70 odd wolves are radio collared, but five of the seven wolves shot this year from the park were wearing radio collars. Though radio hunting is banned and frequencies are scrambled, statistically these figures do seem to suggest some kind of targeting.

F-you to the Feds. It seems Montana and Wyoming are quietly getting their own back on Washington's wolves, whether Nathan, Linda, or the cash-generating tourists they work with, like it or not.

The wild, it seems, is an unforgiving place.

Read the next installment of Jim's wolf blog, "A Taxidermist Talks."

Read the previous installment of Jim's wolf blog, "Celebrity Killing: Yellowstone Wolves in the Firing Line."

Jim Wickens is one of Britain's leading investigative journalists and the co-founder of both the Ecologist Film Unit and also Ecostorm, the environmental media agency. Jim has spend the last decade documenting unreported issues around the world, including exposing illicit whale-meat smuggling networks in Japan, filming the brutal Namibian seal hunt, documenting soya-related murders and poisoning in Argentina, breaking the story of fracking problems in the US, and filming illegal trawlers far out to sea on the Burmese border.

Wolves were once federally protected but now can be hunted again, making the fate and future of the wolf more controversial than ever. UK journalist Jim Wickens reports from Wyoming and Montana to provide his unique insight into the wolf wars of the West. His blog accompanies the exclusive Earth Focus report, Shades of Gray: Living with Wolves, now online!

The Serengeti of the USA they call this place, and it's not hard to see why -- two million acres of unadulterated wildness. A nature lover's dream with rocks dating back 55 million years. A place where elk, bison, and, in recent years, 80 wolves run free.

But driving into the park you do also get a sense of a regulated grip on this 'wild' place. We had come to visit one of Yellowstone's leading wolf scientists, but first we had to get the permits. A brief meeting followed in the park headquarters, where we were talked through a list of do's, and a seemingly endless list of don'ts, for film crews who wish to visit the park. We had to sign an agreement not to consume alcohol, or even engage in nudity whilst shooting in Yellowstone. Snowflakes were falling outside the park office while this surreal meeting took place, and with the temperature way below freezing, the idea that a film crew might suddenly be inclined to strip off and engage in a booze-fuelled orgy bordered on farce. I couldn't help but wonder what antics other film crews must have gotten up to in the past for it to come to this?

But it wasn't all bad, Dr. Dan Stahler being the case in point. A mild-mannered and self-effacing guy, he swept us away from the alcohol and nudity prevention form-filling of the park office, driving us far into the frozen wastes of the Yellowstone wild. 

For Dan, 'wolves mean wilderness,' and he talked with a contagious enthusiasm about the complex interplay of ecosystem management and predator studies. Dan comes across as a scientist with the rarest of talents -- the ability to combine sound science with succinct sound bites.

Standing over the freshly killed carcass of an elk, Dan was also a lot happier than I thought he would be. In recent months he has lost two of his radio collared wolves -- a leading alpha female and male from the same pack. Animals he had studied since 2006 when the female was born. Feted by park visitors for her hunting ability and leadership skills, the alpha female was shot recently by a hunter on the edge of Yellowstone, exercising his or her legal right to hunt wolves with a wolf tag. In our interview Dan appeared, to be surprisingly un-phased by the controversial wolf hunt, vying perhaps for the longer term aim of community bridge-building within the Eastern Rockies, rather than simply crying foul over the sudden death of a star wolf.

While the world rages over the taking of so-called Yellowstone wolves by state-sanctioned hunters, it seems the man who works closest with the animals is remaining cautiously distant. He didn't say as much, but it is clear that biology and PR at Yellowstone go hand in hand; one of the few places perhaps where scientists have to nurture community relations, even when it means their own research suffers as a result.

It seems that when you work with wolves in Yellowstone, pragmatism beats polarization hands down.

Read the next installment of Jim's wolf blog, "A Walk on the Wild Side."

Read the previous installment of Jim's wolf blog, "Shades of Gray: Shedding New Light on the Rocky Mountain Wolf Wars." 

Jim Wickens is one of Britain's leading investigative journalists and the co-founder of both the Ecologist Film Unit and also Ecostorm, the environmental media agency. Jim has spend the last decade documenting unreported issues around the world, including exposing illicit whale-meat smuggling networks in Japan, filming the brutal Namibian seal hunt, documenting soya-related murders and poisoning in Argentina, breaking the story of fracking problems in the US, and filming illegal trawlers far out to sea on the Burmese border.

Wolves were once federally protected but now can be hunted again, making the fate and future of the wolf more controversial than ever. UK journalist Jim Wickens reports from Wyoming and Montana to provide his unique insight into the wolf wars of the West. His blog accompanies the exclusive Earth Focus report, Shades of Gray: Living with Wolves, now online!

A foot of snow and a frosted dawn greets us on our first day in Montana. We are in Big Sky Country, a state with big wolf problems to match. 

Nowhere else, perhaps, is there such a publicized animosity between carnivores and the people that live alongside them, or at least that's what the mainstream media would have us believe.

Following the de-listing of wolves from the Endangered Species Act in 2011, the battle over the place of wolves in America has once again erupted. It's a political act that has generated outrage from wolf advocates, but has been greeted with opportunistic glee by frustrated ranchers, keen to dust down their wolf traps and legally line-up the critters in the crosshairs of their hunting rifles.

Billed as wolf lovers vs. wolf haters, hysterical rants and explosive sound-bytes from both sides of the debate have been feeding frenzied news headlines around the world since wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone 16 years ago. Now a decade-long battle looks set to ignite into an all out war. Or does it? 

Where do the truths really lie in this debate, and where are the voices of ordinary people on the ground in the heated discussions that revolve around human-wolf interactions, voices all too often ignored in the mainstream media?

Link TV and Britain's Ecologist Film Unit have teamed up to journey into this complex and polarized debate. While the battle rages in media headlines and Washington lawsuits, we are off to meet the people who quietly live and labor alongside wolves in Montana today. Our journey will take us from the sweeping vistas of wintery Yellowstone and its scientists, through to the chemical confines of taxidermist workshops, meeting welcoming ranchers, outraged diners at cafes on the roadside, constructive conservationists and cautious bow-hunters, even an outspoken departing governor.

We want to gauge the views of people from all backgrounds, to explore the nature of wolves and the wild; the unspoken shades of gray. Complex middle grounds of hard truths, bitter pills and innovative solutions, voices of integrity that may yet offer a glimmer of hope for America's demonized wolves, and for the people struggling to live with them.

Read the next installment of Jim's wolf blog, "Celebrity Killing: Yellowstone Wolves in the Firing Line." 

Jim Wickens is one of Britain's leading investigative journalists and the co-founder of both the Ecologist Film Unit and also Ecostorm, the environmental media agency. Jim has spend the last decade documenting unreported issues around the world, including exposing illicit whale-meat smuggling networks in Japan, filming the brutal Namibian seal hunt, documenting soya-related murders and poisoning in Argentina, breaking the story of fracking problems in the US, and filming illegal trawlers far out to sea on the Burmese border.

When Sheila Russell decided to move back to her ancestral home in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, she wanted to start a new life. A seventh-generation Russell, whose family had settled the land in 1796, the last year of George Washington’s presidency, she left her corporate job at a catalog company to do what she loved best: farming.

There was only one problem: shale gas. As luck would have it, the Russell farm happened to sit on top of the Marcellus shale, a large underground formation rich in natural gas. In 2010, just as Ms. Russell was embarking on her new career in organic farming, Chesapeake Energy drilled two shale-gas wells across the road, less a thousand feet from the farm.

Although not worried at first and even hopeful that future royalties from the gas may help her expand her business, Ms. Russell soon found herself in a nightmare, when she discovered that one of the wells on her property had been leaking methane gas into the ground, due to a faulty casing, for over a year.

Today, Sheila Russell has stopped drinking the water from her private well and even refuses to water her produce with it, preferring instead a nearby spring-fed pond. Water tests have shown elevated levels of methane and metals, still within state norms, but she does not want to take any chances.

"It's a concern for me, it's a concern for my customers," she says. "We all thought [the gas] was a lot of money coming and that it was safe. And it’s neither safe, nor a money-maker. Do I stay on this seventh-generation farm and keep it going? I don’t know."

Sheila Russell's case is hardly an exception. Bradford County, a bucolic region in northern Pennsylvania full of woodlands, rolling hills, and pastures dotted by red barns and hay bales, with a population of just 63,000 people, has been undergoing a massive industrial transformation for the past few years, as both American and international companies have joined the rush for gas.

This is not the first natural-resource boom in Bradford County. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, coal mining and logging were big economic drivers -- until the coal ran out and the hills were hills were stripped bare -- but the shale gas may prove to be the biggest industry yet.

About 2,000 shale-gas wells have been drilled and permitted in the county so far, making it the most heavily drilled region in Pennsylvania and the Marcellus as a whole. And while the economic benefits for companies, larger leaseholders, and some local businesses have been significant, the gas rush threatens to undermine the venerable farming and dairy operations in the area, while creating a host of environmental and social problems.

The changes are hard to ignore. From a sleepy Pennsylvania town on the banks of the Susquehanna River, Towanda, the county's seat, has metamorphosed into a real boomtown, with industry trucks and large pickups jamming the single main street. Crime has gone up by about 40 percent, while rents and food prices have skyrocketed.

Meanwhile, new restaurants and hotels have sprung up along the river valley to service the rig and pipeline workers, many of them coming here from as far as Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi.

Since 2008, when drilling for shale gas began in the county, revenues from sales tax have jumped up 61 percent, while unemployment has hovered at around six percent, lower than the national average. So far, local landowners have received $160 million in leases, which have boosted spending, as well as the county's tax base.

"The shale gas industry has had a very positive economic impact on the region" says Anthony Ventello, the executive director of Progress Authority, the local chamber of commerce, pointing out that the gas industry continues to bring in new investments. A new 800 MW gas-fired power plant, worth between 600 and 800 million dollars, has been already planned, while other, smaller gas-related projects are soon to follow.

"We're looking to create a value-added economy and not just ship natural gas out of here like a third-world country," he says.

Yet, behind the upbeat statistics, a darker side lurks. Blowouts, toxic spills, water contamination, and gas migration have accompanied development.

Chesapeake Energy, the company with the most substantial presence, was fined $900,000 -- the largest environmental fine in the state’s history -- for allowing gas migration to contaminate the water of 16 families in the county in 2010. Later, a blowout of one of the company’s wells caused large amounts of "produced water" -- liquid waste associated with shale gas extraction -- to spill into Towanda creek. In Bradford County, according to the Department of Environmental Protection, overall there have been more than 600 violations so far.

Most often, accidents occur due to faulty casing and cementing, with gas and a variety of dangerous metals migrating into the water table. The industry calculates that six percent of all new wells have some kind of casing or cementing problem, but in reality that percentage could be much higher.

Carol French, a long-time dairy farmer, experienced the adverse consequences of shale-gas drilling first hand, when her well water turned white and murky in 2011. Soon, her whole family started having skin rashes, while her 24-year old daughter fell extremely ill with intestinal, liver and spleen problems (she quickly improved when she moved away from the farm). Meanwhile, the family's cattle began suffering from skin rashes and breeding issues.

"I got to see my farm lose 90 percent of its property value," she says. “I’m losing my milk market and probably I won’t be able to sell my cows. The gas industry had negatively impacted our health, our water, our business, our society."

Mrs. French has made the conscious decision to keep her dairy operation going, despite the fact that there are about 340 shale-gas wells within a ten-mile radius of her farm. Many of her neighbors, on the other hand, have simply opted to take the money from their gas leases and sell their dairy herds. Out of about 12 dairy farmers in the immediate vicinity, only three have kept their farms running, according to Mrs. French's estimates. Even the local milk hauler has gone on to work as a truck driver for the shale-gas industry.

Another serious impact has been the fragmentation of farmland by the wells pads, compressor stations, and the thousands of miles of pipelines already crisscrossing the hills or currently under construction.

Certainly, there are other factors contributing to the decline of dairy farms in Bradford County, beyond the gas industry. Low milk prices and expensive feed have kept the business on the edge of survival for years and many have seen the windfall from gas leases and royalties as the perfect exit.

The choice was clear for Howard Keir, a neighbor of Carol French. After leasing the mineral rights of his property to Chesapeake Energy, he immediately sold off his dairy herd. He believes shale-gas extraction is generally safe and today has three wells on his property, out of which he soon expects to receive royalties.

"With the price of milk going mostly down, farmers were going out of business anyway, so you can’t blame it all on the industry," he says.

Anthony Ventello, of the chamber of commerce, agrees. "Don’t get me wrong, but farming is doomed, no matter what you do. It has to do with milk prices mostly. Yes, things will change, but I don’t see that as a danger."

Anecdotal evidence suggests that some farmers use the proceeds from gas exploration to upgrade their operations, but the general trend has been in the opposite direction.

A 2012 study by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences draws a direct correlation between the decline of cow numbers and dairy production in areas with higher drilling activity. Between 2007 and 2010, in counties with 150 or more gas wells cow numbers have decreased by 18.7 percent on average, compared to only 1.2 percent decrease in counties with no Marcellus wells. In Bradford County the decline has been 18.8 percent for that time period.

Timothy Kelsey, professor of agricultural economics and a co-author of the study, sees a danger for the entire dairy industry in the region if the decline continues.

"If the number of farms and agricultural activity fall too low, these essential supporting businesses [like feed stores, large animal veterinarians, machinery dealers, and agricultural processors] will leave or quit, making it difficult for remaining farmers to access needed inputs and markets and thus remain in business," he writes.

If such domino effect takes place and farming and dairy production in Bradford County collapse along with the entire supply chain, even the large financial inflow from the shale gas industry might not be able to make up for the difference.

A law that came into effect last year in Pennsylvania, Act 13, tries to mitigate some of the negative effects of shale gas drilling by providing an impact fee. In 2012, Bradford County received $8.2 million with another $6.8 million projected for 2013.

"It's a chunk of change that Bradford County never had before," says Mark Smith, one of the county commissioners. "Is it enough? I don't think we know that answer yet."

Without a doubt shale gas has made a serious contribution to the economy of Bradford County and Pennsylvania as a whole, yet risking a sustainable industry like farming for an unsustainable one like fossil-fuel extraction may prove too expensive in the end.

Already a bust is on the horizon: drilling in the county has seen a substantial decline, from 408 shale-gas wells drilled in 2011 to 149 well through November of 2012, due to low gas prices. The construction of thousands of miles of pipeline continues in preparation for the new boom when prices pick up, but it is far from certain whether farming in the area could recover so easily.

"The story is always different at the kitchen table where they come to sign you on than it is out in the field," says Bruce Kennedy, a long-time farmer whose family roots in Pennsylvania go back 200 years. In 2011, three accidents related to shale gas extraction happened on his property, including a large diesel spill.

"My grandfather always taught me to leave a place better than you found it. I don’t mind people going after the gas, but it doesn't entitle them to abuse the place. You have to be a good steward of the land."

Reporting for this article was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Calkins Media. Dimiter Kenarov is a freelance journalist based in Istanbul, Turkey. To learn more about the impacts of fracking, visit Link TV's ISSUE: Fracking page.